Building a Light Box/Light Tent #1: Building a Light Box

In another life, photography was my hobby. (You can check out some of my photographs here.) While I have created lots of projects that I wanted to upload, everytime I tried to take pictures of them, they would come out like crap. You can still see examples of this in my earlier projects.

I initially was going to buy a light tent just to improve the quality of my projects to upload. I went to a couple of local photo shops but the least expensive kit started at $149. Walmart had a kit for$70 but the lights in them were suspect. I started to ask myself, “Why can’t I make one of these?” My initial thought was to buy some 1×1 and use Miter Saw and Kreg Jig to put the frame together. Cut out and staple a bed sheet and I would largely be done. As simple as this sounds it was still more work than I wanted to put into it so I didn’t do it. Later I came upon this website which used PVC pipe to build a Light Tent. This was something I could fairly quickly so I was in.

Printing out the dimensions, I went to my local Totem to look for 1/2” PVC. They didn’t have any. Home Depot was down the street but they didn’t really have anything either. The service person mentioned a plumbing store in Calgary that absolutely would have it. Of course I only had 1/2 hour before they closed. Sure enough…when I got there they were not open. I was starting to get frustrated. I decided to try Lowes as a last resort. Strangely enough they had everything I was looking for. Woohoo! I was in business.

I then took all of the parts and started cutting everything to size. I could have used my bandsaw or crosscut the pipe on my tablesaw but the plastic melts and it’s a pain to clean up. I just used my hacksaw to cut everything down and then a quick sanding of the ends.

All of the pieces cut.

The frame put together…

Once this is all done, I went to Walmart to get some lights ($20.00 for two lights and bulbs) and a twin white bedsheet ($25.00 – kind of expensive but I didn’t feel like running around). I also picked up 3 sheets of thick construction paper/poster board for $2 each.

Here’s the final result.

This has made a HUGE difference in the quality of my displays. Let me know if you build one!